State of the Union adjective contest

I don’t think Obama actually did a “The state of the union is strong/hopeful/hungover” sentence last year, which is a mistake. It’s like the Alfred Hitchcock cameo: you can’t just relax and watch the movie until you’ve spotted him walking a dog or wrestling with a cello.

Still, even if he doesn’t play his role, my annual role here is to offer you this contest. Fill in this sentence: “The state of the union is _____” Fearful? Olbermannless? Tea Partying Like It’s 1773? Totally over “Glee”?

Today -100: January 22, 1911: Of senators on the run, young FDR, and buffalo

Sen. Thomas Carter (R-Montana) warns that the proposed constitutional amendment for popular election of the Senate is being used “to saddle the disfranchisement of negro voters upon the country by constitutional amendment” by removing the ability of Congress to regulate Senate elections.

The 15 Republican West Virginia state senators are still in self-imposed exile outside the state (having dinner with President Taft’s brother), but the 15 D’s think they can form a quorum without the R’s since 4 of them were never properly sworn in. So they may just go ahead and select the US senators.

An article in the NYT magazine section on a new 28-year-old New York state senator begins, “It is safe to predict that the African jungle will never resound with the crack of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s rifle”, unlike his fifth cousin. There’s not much to say about FDR, because he hasn’t accomplished much of anything yet, beyond leading insurgent D’s unwilling to accept Tammany dictation about who the next US senator should be, but the article, which I imagine is the first real look at FDR in the press, says it at some length.

The US evidently suggested to Ecuador that the US lease the Galapagos Islands from it for 99 years for $15m, I guess for use by the Navy.

The last buffalo: the owner of the last existing herd of buffalo in the United States has sold 500 head to Canada and is killing off the remaining 20, in violation of Montana game laws.

A healthy lay status

The pope criticized Silvio Berlusconi for fucking all those prostitutes, saying, “The singular vocation that the city of Rome requires today of you, who are public officials, is to offer a good example of the positive and useful interaction between a healthy lay status and the Christian faith.” Um, yeah.

Today -100: January 21, 1911: Of flying high, football, invasions, poison, lynchings, and the Virginnies

A state representative in Missouri, a friend of the aviators Hoxsey and Johnstone, who both died in crashes last month, introduces a bill to ban planes flying at more than 1,000 feet.

A football game between Iowa University and the U of Missouri is called off because Iowa has a negro player and refused to bench him for the game. The two teams have agreed not to play against each other until he graduates.

Santo Domingo (the future Dominican Republic) invades Haiti. There’s a territorial dispute.

In the Trial of the Century of the Week, Laura Schenk is being tried in West Virginia for poisoning her husband, although there seems good reason to doubt whether he was actually poisoned. In an interesting tactic, the defense attorney offered poison to the jurors, 12 grains of sugar of lead mixed in water, to prove that it was too icky not to be detected. If the poison tastes like shit, you must acquit. Four jurors took up the invitation, tasting and then spitting out the beverage.

A negro named Oval Poulard is lynched in Opelousas, Louisiana, after shooting a deputy (who received only a minor flesh wound) who was trying to arrest him for discharging firearms.

Divorces can be so difficult. The Supreme Court is currently working on the 50-year-old divorce between Virginia and West Virginia, specifically the question of how to divide the state’s debt, which at the time of the split in 1863 was $33 million. VA wants WV to pay 1/3, WV wants to pay nothing.

What’s up, Baby Doc?

Baby Doc Duvalier denies that he has ambitions to become president. “Blood-soaked hereditary dictator yes, president no,” he reassured the Haitian people.

Today -100: January 20, 1911: Of passports, skyscrapers, and wine riots

For 30 years Russia has refused to recognize American passports held by Jews, in violation of the 1832 treaty between the two countries.

F.W. Woolworth announces plans to build the Woolworth Building, which at 57 stories will be the tallest skyscraper in the world (but shorter than the Eiffel Tower) and is expected to cost $12 million (it will actually cost $13.5m and open in 1913, and a very nice building it is too).

Headline of the Day -100: “Troops Stop Wine Riots.” By under-paid wine workers in the Champagne region of France.

Today -100: January 19, 1911: Of senators, war, and planes & boats

Henry Cabot Lodge is narrowly re-selected as US senator for Massachusetts, despite the fierce opposition of Gov. Eugene Foss.

Colombia has invaded Peru.

Aviator Eugene Ely successfully lands his plane on a naval cruiser in the San Francisco Bay, the first time this has been accomplished. Ely says, “I think the trick could be successfully turned nine times out of ten.” A great step forward in warfare. Hurrah.

Bet that name’s looking a little limiting now, huh?

Officials of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party have spent the day frantically cold calling everyone named Lieberman in the Hartford phone book, looking for a new candidate to run for Senate under its imprimatur.

Wherein your faith in The Youth of Today will be restored

LA Times headline: “Student Apologized to Classmates after His Gun Went Off, Hitting Two Students.” Who says that kids today lack proper manners?

I’m starting to think the Catholic Church is a little weird

Indy: “Vial of Late Pope’s Blood to Be Kept in Polish Church after His Beatification.”

Today -100: January 18, 1911: Of segregation, fleeing senators, and leather

In a physical culture class in a public school in Flushing, NY, a white girl basically goes into hysterics when asked to dance with a black boy. An agitation is now beginning to return to segregated schools, which were abolished by Theodore Roosevelt in 1900 when he was governor.

The Calif. Legislature is considering a bill to segregate all Asians in the public schools. And Native Americans.

The West Virginia state senate is evenly split between the parties, but the D’s are trying to oust two R’s, so the R’s have been preventing a quorum. When the D’s issued warrants to arrest them as absentees, all 15 R’s have fled to Ohio.

An insane guy shoots at French Prime Minister Briand in the Chamber of Deputies, wounds the director of public relief instead.

Headline of the Day -100: “Stir in Central Leather.”

I watch Sarah Palin on Hannity so you don’t have to: You can spin up anything out of anybody’s statements

Her hope for the families of the Tucson victims: “May He turn their mourning, somehow, supernaturally into joy.” Yeah, God, get right on that, wouldja?

She didn’t deny that those were crosshairs on that map, but said that for many years maps have been used to target certain districts. So that’s okay then. In fact, Democrats invented the use of crosshairs on maps.

Ah yes, the obligatory Martin Luther King Jr quote: “A lie cannot live.” The lies about her, of course.Because even Martin Luther King was All. About. Her.

She used the term “falsely accused” I think 4 times about the linking of her and talk show hosts and the Tea Party to the shootings. I’m not really sure why that term annoyed me so much, but it did.

At one point she referred to the mainstream media and quickly corrected that to lamestream. Phew, hate to make a gaffe like that.

Asked about Obama’s speech, she said “some parts” of it hit home, but that it was too much like a campaign rally.

Re “blood libel”: “You can spin up anything out of anybody’s statements”. That term has been used for aeons; it’s double standards to criticize her for using it. And if her enemies didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all, she said twice as if she’d just come up with it.

One of the things that makes the US “exceptional” is that we have free speech. No other country in the world has free speech, evidently. Yay for us.

As such

Berlusconi says he couldn’t possibly have paid all those young women and under-aged girls to have sex with him, because he has been in a stable relationship with one woman since his wife divorced him for having sex with women he paid money to. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Former dictator Baby Doc Duvalier returns to Haiti “to help the people of Haiti,” and is not immediately tossed into prison (or torn apart by angry mobs).


Prime Minister Bellerive says Duvalier “is a Haitian and, as such, is free to return home.” He’s also a mass murderer and, as such, shouldn’t be free to do anything but rot in a cell. I have nothing funny to say about this.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still in exile.

Today -100: January 17, 1911: Of senators, Gypsy queens, and Coleman Livingston Blease

In a process that makes a good argument for popular election of US senators (Congress is just beginning to consider the 17th Amendment), NY Democratic “Boss” Murphy is trying to fix a Senate seat for his man William Sheehan, now that the D’s have taken control of the Legislature. Murphy called a caucus of the Democratic state legislators, but 25 of the 116 refused to come so that they would not be bound by the caucus vote. One of the 25 was brand-new state senator Franklin D. Roosevelt. Gov. Dix puts forward the odd proposition that legislators should vote in accordance with their own consciences and the will of their constituents, which is just adorable. Neither Democratic faction has enough votes to put through their candidate without R votes. This fight is going to go on for 74 days before a compromise candidate is chosen, and is way too complicated for me to detail here (or to put it another way, I’m too lazy to try to figure it all out).

Meanwhile, the NY Republican caucus nominates the incumbent, Chauncey Depew, nearly unanimously, with a couple of votes going to Teddy Roosevelt.

Immigration deports the new wife of the Gypsy King (who the Times informs us is “inclined to stoutness”). And after he paid $60 for her in Bosnia, too.

Headline of the Day -100: “Auto Takes His Trousers.”

The new governor of South Carolina, Coleman Livingston Blease, is sworn in. Let’s look at his inaugural speech at some length, shall we? He begins by crowing about his victory over “a set of political character thieves, the meanest and most contemptible people known to man,” who tried to “crown him with a crown of persecution, envy and malice.” He recounts how he called on the author of an editorial against him in The State to show up at one of his rallies and repeat his statements in person (the editor didn’t, possibly remembering how his brother, a previous editor, was shot dead in 1903 by Lt. Governor James Tillman, who blamed the paper for his having lost the 1902 governor’s race) (Tillman was acquitted) and demands that the Legislature pass a bill to punish newspaper editors and reporters who say false things about people with a fine and imprisonment. He goes on for quite some time, Sarah Palin-style, about the newspapers that sullied his reputation.

He calls for more support for Confederate veterans, “for any man who does not love the ex-Confederate soldier is either a Yankee or has negro blood in his veins.”

He calls for liberal spending for schools. Well, for schools for white children. But he is against compulsory education because it “dethrones the authority of the parents and places the paid agents of the State in control of the children, and destroys family government” by tacitly telling children “we are giving you what your unnatural parents would not give,” thus imparting “the spirit of rebellion against parental authority”. And he says everyone should stop “parad[ing] figures to show the percentage of the ignorance of” South Carolinians. Any government officials who make such figures public should be fired. What he’s really against, though, is “white people’s taxes being used to educate negroes. I am a friend to the negro race. This is proved by the regard in which negroes of my home county hold me. The white people of the South are the best friends to the negro race. In my opinion, when the people of this country began to try to educate the negro they made a serious and grave mistake... So why continue?”

He wants a law against smoking by boys (not girls?) under 16. Also one against possession of toy guns (and real guns) by children under 16.

He wants to amend the law which currently allows white convicts to be placed in the same camps as negro convicts and worked in the same squads, threatening to pardon any white prisoner so grievously treated.

He is in favor of counties enacting licensing systems for the sale of liquor but only if a majority of the white people want it.

He wants “to make executions for the crime of rape, or assault with intent to ravish, public, as I believe this will bring about more satisfactory results – allowing others, and particularly those of the younger generation of that race from which most of these culprits come, to have a full view of the punishment meted out.” This he says, might prevent some lynchings. Not that there’s anything wrong with lynchings, of course: “Some newspapers and some people, in every controversy between the white man and the negro, seem to take delight in taking the side of the negro and denouncing the lynching, but this is a white man’s country and will continue to be ruled by the white man, regardless of the opinions or editorials of quarter or half breeds or foreigners. The pure-blooded Caucasian will always defend the virtue of our women, no matter what the cost. If rape is committed, death must follow.”

He wants to make cocaine illegal. “I also, in this connection, beg leave to call your attention to the evil of the habitual drinking of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, and such like mixtures, as I fully believe they are injurious.” He recommends beer instead.

Today -100: January 16, 1911: Of healers, lynchings, and ether

The NYT applauds the arrest of a Christian Science “healer.” Usually they’re only arrested after someone dies, but not in this case.

Three negroes are lynched by a small mob in Shelbyville, Kentucky. One was a convicted murderer, but since his victim was only an old black woman, it looks like he just happened to be there when the mob broke down the jail door looking for the other two, each charged with “an attempt to detain” white girls.

The new craze in the Boston area for people wanting to get high is inhaling ether.

Today -100: January 15, 1911: Of horseless trucks, closed incidents, and racist medical students

Trend of the Day -100: “Horseless Truck Has Come To Stay.”

The Mexican government says the revolution is over, a “closed incident.”

Honduras, on the other hand, “admits existence of revolt.”

Medical students at Georgetown & George Washington Universities are boycotting the (required) class of a professor who let black students from Howard attend his last lecture. Both (all-white) universities are backing their racist students, who will be required neither to apologize to the professor nor attend classes with negroes.

Biden in Pakistan: We are not the enemies of Islam

Joe Biden was in Pakistan this week. He made some rambling remarks alongside Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.

GILANI SUFFERS FOR HIS COUNTRY: “And I tell you that we have had numerous telephone conversations, and I thank you for always taking my call, and I thank you for your input.” Like all those calls when I was trying to update to Windows 7.

SO SADDENED, IN FACT, THAT SALMAN TASEER’S ACTUAL NAME HAS ENTIRELY SLIPPED HIS MIND: “The president and I -- indeed, the entire world, I would suggest -- were saddened, saddened by the cold-blooded murder of a decent, brave man. The governor was killed simply because he was a voice for tolerance and understanding.”

WHAT JOE WOULD RESPECTFULLY SUGGEST: “There are those also who accuse the United States of violating your sovereignty as we support your army and pursue terrorists where they hide. .... But I would respectfully suggest that it’s the extremists who violate Pakistan’s sovereignty and corrupt its good name.” Well technically those guys are mostly Pakistanis, so I’m not sure how exactly they violate Pakistan’s sovereignty. But even if they do, that doesn’t mean that assassinating them with drones on Pakistani soil doesn’t likewise violate Pakistan’s sovereignty. I feel silly even pointing out something so obvious, but Biden speaks as if he thinks he’s making some sort of logical argument here.

BECAUSE NOTHING SAYS RESTORING AND STRENGTHENING SOVEREIGNTIES LIKE MISSILE STRIKES BY ANOTHER COUNTRY: “Our goal is to work with your leaders and you, Mr. Prime Minister, to restore and strengthen sovereignties in those areas of your country where extremists have violated it.”


QUITE THE OPPOSITE: “The assertion that we disrespect Islam is actually quite the opposite. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States of America.” Or maybe it’s Gleeks, I always get those two mixed up.

REST AREA: “So I want to put to rest, which I know I will not by this simple assertion -- we are not, we are not the enemies of Islam”. Frenemies?

ADMIRES SO MUCH THAT JINNAH’S ACTUAL NAME HAS ENTIRELY SLIPPED HIS MIND: “America admires, admires the vision of your great founder, who said wisely, and I quote...”

Today -100: January 14, 1911: Of foreign banks, foreign spies, socialists & supes, and wills

A “foreign bank” in Pittsburg goes bankrupt and the owner blows his brains out. But depositors, described by the Times as “Gypsies, Poles, and Slavs, a number of them women, in fantastic headgear,” gathered in front of the closed bank demanding to see the body to ensure that he hadn’t faked his death and absconded.

The House is working on a bill to outlaw spies. In 1911, it seems, spying for a foreign nation was only a crime if the US was actually at war, in which case it fell under the treason laws. The timing is probably related to several recent incidents in Europe, such as British “hikers” being arrested in Germany making sketches of fortifications, but also to the activities of Japanese spies who got hold of blueprints to fortresses along the Pacific Coast and in the Philippines.

Teddy Roosevelt is to go hunting with a group of his Rough Rider pals in Mexico. Did no one tell him there’s a revolution going on there?

Taft goes to the top of the Washington Monument for the first time.

Eugene Debs calls for socialists to rise up in revolt, the nature of which he fails to specify, against the Supreme Court. On Lincoln’s Birthday. Debs particularly objects to the 6-month sentence given to an editor for posting a reward for the return of the fugitive ex-governor of Kentucky (which I’ve mentioned before), given that union leaders Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were infamously kidnapped in Colorado by Idaho police and brought forcibly to Idaho in 1906.

In Brooklyn, Surrogate (like a judge) Ketcham rejects the will of millionaire Robert Thompson. 4 months before his death, the 70-year-old Thompson married a 27-year-old stenographer at his paper company. His relatives were not best pleased, including his dead first wife, “Muzzie,” whose displeasure from beyond the grave was made known through spiritual messages helpfully relayed by Thompson’s granddaughter, Marion A. Funk. The dead wife also said that if he did marry, he should cut the second wife from his will in favor of his grandchildren, and this he did. The surrogate ruled that the will was the product of fraud.

Carrie Nation collapses!

Caption contest

The memorial in Tuscon yesterday. Obama gazing beatifically into a new enlightened era of civility, or something, and John McCain (2nd row, 2nd from the left) glaring balefully at Obama. But what is he (either one, or both) thinking?

Today -100: January 13, 1911: Of fingerprints

Two burglars are the first people convicted in New York state on the basis of fingerprint evidence (actually, they decided to plead guilty when confronted with it).